


tales to astonish

by luninosity



Series: Pulp Fictions [2]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon, And Steve's Reactions, Angst with a Happy Ending, Bucky Barnes Recovering, Bucky's Stories, Canon Compliant, Comfort, Established Relationship, Explicit Consent, Happy Ending, Kink Exploration, Letters, Light Angst, Light Dom/sub, M/M, Marriage Proposal, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Pre-Captain America: The First Avenger, Pulp Science Fiction, Sexual Content, Spanking, Sub!Bucky, True Love, War, writer!Bucky
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-25
Updated: 2015-09-22
Packaged: 2018-04-17 06:26:09
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 12,460
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4656069
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/luninosity/pseuds/luninosity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><strike>Six</strike> Eight excerpts from bits of Bucky's writing over the years, and Steve's reactions to them.</p><p>Or, the story in which this happens: “Stop,” Bucky said. “Steve. It was my first published story. Stop reading that. Please. I’m begging you.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. thrilling wonder tales

**Author's Note:**

  * For [melonbutterfly](https://archiveofourown.org/users/melonbutterfly/gifts).
  * Translation into 中文 available: [tales to astonish](https://archiveofourown.org/works/4779860) by [ogawaryoko](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ogawaryoko/pseuds/ogawaryoko)



> Originally begun as a single present (the previous story) for a friend, but then, well, I really wanted to write Bucky's terrible pulp fiction; and THEN I wanted to write Steve reading it, and then somehow it turned into post-Winter-Soldier writing as a form of healing (we'll get there). 
> 
> And so this sequel grew to at least five chapters, and could not be contained in a little ficlet. And then melonbutterfly (flylittlekoala on tumblr) also wanted to play in this AU (look for that story, too!). And I thought, well--why not let other people come and play too?
> 
> So, this is my invitation: once I get *this* story up, if you want to--obviously don't contradict anything melonbutterfly and I might've established as 'canon,' or maybe check in with me if you've got an idea; but if you want to have some fun writing Bucky's pulp-fiction stories, or Steve and Bucky acting out some scenes from stories, or anything else...go for it! :-)
> 
> Each chapter is, of course, a different genre. This first one's very much in the vein of classic pulp adventure-hero fiction.

from “The Rescue of Lady de Winter,” J. B. Barnes, _Thrilling Wonder Tales,_ 1937:

 

_“My darling,” Sean Ridgeworth proclaimed, sweeping Lady Rebecca de Winter into his muscular tanned arms, “we’ve outrun the heathens and rescued you from becoming a virgin sacrifice, we’ve escaped the crocodiles and avoided the twenty-seven ambushes set by desert tribesmen; and I must know, how did you manage to throw the crystal skull at precisely the right angle to trigger the trap early and capture the high priest so perfectly?”_

_“Well,” the lady said, “I played baseball with my American cousins.”_

_“And you saved my life!” announced the adventurer, realizing only now how lonely that life had been without matching strength and sparkling wit at his side. His blond hair fluttered in the breeze, as the desert sunset framed their bodies in purple light. “Will you return to New York with me, my treasure, as my bride?”_

_Lady de Winter threw her arms about his neck—noting the feel of powerful masculine muscles, matching that lion’s heart which beat beneath—and answered joyfully, “Yes!”_

_And the intrepid conqueror bent to kiss her soundly, thinking of his lips upon alabaster skin, of tremulous sighs and dewy thighs—_

“Really,” Steve said, putting down the magazine. “Wow, Buck.” Outside snow halfheartedly tapped at the window. Winter had billowed in and the heat in the apartment’d gone out the day before; Bucky ran warm and Steve had license, now, to burrow into Bucky’s bed—it was bigger and had become _their_ bed, which was new enough to be astonishing every time—and stick his cold toes under Bucky’s legs.

“I can’t believe I let you read that one,” Bucky grumbled. He was naked; they both were, and huddled together for heat and for the sheer joy of touching, here in this space that was their own, away from gossiping city eyes outside.

“Dewy thighs,” Steve emphasized. “And conquering kisses.”

“Stop,” Bucky said. “Steve. It was my first published story. Please. I’m begging you.”

“Not sure that’s begging,” Steve said, “not even on your knees,” and he didn’t expect Bucky to actually do it, wasn’t thinking that at all; but Bucky glared at him and then got out of bed and onto both knees on the bedroom floor and leaned forward and flipped up the blanket—cold air darted in—and kissed Steve’s skinny sharp kneecap, a press of lips over bone. Steve felt a bolt of dark secret heat flash down his spine.

“So that works,” he said.

Bucky made a sort-of scowl at him and bit his knee, not hard.

“What the _fuck_ ,” Steve said. “Come up here.”

Bucky got up and slid back under the covers and tucked himself down under Steve’s arm, his own arm flung across Steve’s stomach, his legs scrunched up too: as if trying to make himself the smaller one of them, which was a losing battle if Steve'd ever seen one.

He rested a hand on Bucky’s hair, lightly. “You want me to stop?”

“No,” Bucky muttered into Steve’s chest. His breath was warm. “Just maybe don’t say anythin’ until you’re done. Don’t look at me.”

“I can do the first part,” Steve said, and ran the hand over his hair, down to the back of his neck. Bucky shivered a little. “Whatever you want.”

 


	2. detective stories

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is for [hitlikehammers](http://hitlikehammers.tumblr.com/</a) and [boopboopbi](http://boopboopbi.tumblr.com/</a), for all the encouragement and friendship.

from “Steve Ransom and the Case of the Ruby Necklace,” J.B. Barnes, _Detective Stories,_ 1938:

 

_Long legs and dark hair and red lips walked into my fourth-floor office on a dull grey hangover kind of Monday afternoon, and shut the door behind her. The lips were wrapped around a cigarette. I knew right away that she was going to be trouble._

_Good thing I lived for trouble, really._

_She exhaled smoke like anxious clouds. Her eyes lit on me._

_Now, I’ve never been what most guys would call physically imposing. Scrawny, even. Short. Easy to look past. But in my line of work people tend to underestimate the little guy._

_“I’m looking for—” she started._

_“You’re the opera singer Berenice d’Isola,” I said, leaning back in my chair, feet up on the desk, “and you’re lookin’ for Steve Ransom, private investigator, about the ruby necklace somebody stole from your dressing room last night.”_

_“How did you—”_

_I picked up a cigarette of my own. Smiled. “Sources. Got my fee?”_

_She smiled back—the same faux-innocent glow that seduced men nightly from theater stalls. She sat down. She crossed her legs. Silk whispered. “Mr Ransom,” she said, “your sources are flawed. No one stole my necklace. I have it right here.” She did, too. Rubies glinted a sullen red across slender fingers. The web of black lacy settings would encircle her throat when worn, clasping tightly as a lover’s hands. I didn’t show my surprise. I didn’t think about her lovely throat. Not at all._

_“What I need to know,” she went on, blue eyes all open and honest, “is who stands to gain from starting such a rumor.”_

_And, well. I’m always a sucker for an honest-eyed dame._

 

“So…you’re my dame,” Steve summarized.

“I take it all back,” Bucky said. “I’d never come to you for help in my time of trouble, Steve.”

“I’d dress you in rubies if I could,” Steve said, and then, equally heartfelt, “and nothing else.”

“Also wrote about a lover's hands,” Bucky said, “so are you gonna do somethin' about it, or do I have to come up with better metaphors—” He got cut off when Steve shoved him flat on the long-suffering sofa and climbed on top and kissed him, kissed him fiercely as rubies, as battlefield treasure, as love.

 


	3. romance stories

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is for [ninemoons42](http://archiveofourown.org/users/ninemoons42), because yay friends.

from “Janie and the Quarterback,” Rebecca Jane Buchanan [James Barnes], _Romance Stories for Good Girls,_ 1939:

 

_Janie’s heart skipped a beat as she turned the corner of her high-school hallway. There he was. Oh, there he was: the quarterback Grant Stevens, tall and broad-shouldered and blond, sunshine catching in his hair. Grant Stevens was the boy every girl dreamed of: varsity athlete, but a tender artist, too, the kind of boy who volunteered at local hospitals and drew cartoons to make sick kids smile, and did illustrations for the school paper which came out on Mondays. He was standing with a group of equally popular boys, talking, gesturing; the sunlight made halos around his hands.  
_

_Janie took a breath and clung to her books and felt her glasses slipping down her face. She wasn’t the kind of girl Grant Stevens would ever notice, not plain Jane Barnet with her mousy brown hair and bookworm tendencies; but it was nice to dream, once in a while._

_Unfortunately, while dreaming, she didn’t notice the “Freshly-Mopped Floor!!” sign._

_Janie went sliding. Her books went sliding. Her glasses fell off, too, which was why she didn’t notice for a minute that there was Grant Stevens, crouching down and handing them back to her. He looked genuinely worried._

_“Um,” she squeaked._

_“Hey,” Grant Stevens said. “Are you okay?”_

_Janie just nodded, because she wasn’t sure she could speak._

_“Hey Stevens,” one of the other football players called, “we’re gonna be late!”_

_“In a minute!” Grant called back, and went back to looking at Janie. “I know you,” he said. “You sit in front of me, in English.”_

_“Um,” Janie said again._

_“Come on,” he said, and held out a hand and helped her up. “I’ve got your books.” And Janie Barnet fell in love. Not just daydreams, but love._

_“Oh, hey,” he said, looking at the title of the top one, “_ A History of Modern Art _? Are you an artist?”_

_“No—I mean I’m not—” She flushed. “I like history. And books. And looking at. Art.” Works of art. Like you. Oh, dear._

_“So,” Grant Stevens said, smiling at her, a smile she’d never seen him share with the football boys or the pretty blonde cheerleaders, a kind of shy delighted smile, “maybe I could…could I walk you home?”_

 

Steve walked into the kitchen. “Bucky?”

Bucky finished drinking the lemonade—the _end_ of the lemonade, Steve noticed, with mingled exasperation and love—and turned around. Summer sweat painted his temples, his back; he was shirtless, and graceful and muscular and everything that Steve wasn’t; he had dirt under his nails from his summer construction job, and a bruise on one shoulder where a beam’d fallen out of someone else’s grip, which he’d tried to say was no big deal.

He was perfect. “Bucky,” Steve said, waving the pulp pages at him. “Did you put ice on that? And also, why am I a quarterback?”

“No ice, and ’cause you’re my ideal guy.” Bucky swung his arm around, testing range of motion; winced and tried to hide it. “It’s okay, Steve, don’t worry.”

“Come over here,” Steve said. Bucky came willingly and sprawled out on the sofa and let Steve dig sharp bony hands into his back, kneading muscle. Steve sat on top of him so he couldn’t get up, and demanded, “You ain’t makin’ fun of me, are you?”

“What?” Bucky did try to sit up and twist around. Steve, having planned this in advance, jabbed him with an elbow. “No,” Bucky said. “No.”

“Because I’m not. A quarterback.” He would never be; he never had been. He looked at his arms. Thought about the slightness of his weight, the hitch in his breathing, the skip in his heart, the—

“I can hear you thinking that,” Bucky said. “Steve, no.”

“Why,” Steve said. “Why me. You could—if you wanted that, if you wanted a—someone who could—”

“I don’t want someone who could,” Bucky said, turning his head enough to scowl. “I want you. You and your damn pointy elbows. God help me.”

“But you write—”

“That’s still you,” Bucky said. “It’s all you. Who you are.”

“It’s not—”

“ ’S what I see.”

“Your eyes’re defective,” Steve said.

“Thought that was yours,” Bucky said. “You want me.”

“You’re not even funny. That joke isn’t funny.”

“I’m Jane,” Bucky said. “In my own story.”

“You—” Steve stopped. Summer sunshine murmured voicelessly to window-glass, beckoning. “That’s just stupid.”

Bucky just looked at him: same to you, then.

“Okay,” Steve said. “I get your point.”

“Do you?” Bucky wriggled under him. “ ’Cause I can come up with another point. Bigger.”

“How are you even a writer,” Steve said, “that’s a goddamn terrible line,” and bent down to kiss him anyway, sun sliding slickly over sweaty backs as they moved together, as Steve dropped the magazine.


	4. weird (and kinky) tales

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is for [Euruaina](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Euruaina), as a birthday-present, because I'm not sure I'll have time for a proper one! *hugs*
> 
> This chapter also contains spanking and sexual content, just fyi.
> 
> This one of Bucky's stories owes a lot to an unpublished Robert Howard (creator of Conan etc) short story from the early 1930s, in which there is, yes, spanking. 
> 
> Just a note here: the pulps, especially _Weird Tales,_ were notorious for paying authors late and on weird (ha) schedules; Howard, for example, was owed several hundred dollars when he died, a relatively decent amount of money for the '30s. So Bucky's probably making $15-$35 per story (depending on the specific pulp publication's sales success and his own author reputation), which is pretty good money, but not necessarily getting paid in a timely fashion; he might be *not* getting paid for several months and *then* get, say, a hundred-dollar check. 
> 
> So he and Steve can maybe afford to go grocery shopping, but they're still not going to move to a nicer apartment. (Also, Steve--now that he knows--gets Seriously Angry about this on a semi-regular basis: "You keep those magazines sellin' copies, Buck! They can't pay you on time?! What the hell, I mean, do I have to go punch a publisher in the face, just tell me--")
> 
> These stories now have [lovely art by sakura9842 on tumblr over here!](http://sakura9842.tumblr.com/post/127705366839/for-luninosity-later-much-later-decades-of)

 

from “Princess Jama and the Barbarian Conqueror,” J.B. Barnes, _Weird Tales_ , 1940:

 

_“I swore I would return you to your father, princess,” Rogaz rumbled, catching her by the wrist, “and by Crum, I shall do it!”_

_Jama kicked him._

_He caught her easily the second time, and regarded her with a warrior’s hard-edged sympathy. The magical sword Kring hummed to itself in the corner, weaving its spell, calling to Fate the way it did in idle moments. “You don’t wish to go back?”_

_“I wish to marry whom I choose!” she retorted, and tried again to run. Lightning crashed down, splitting the tree near the mouth of the cave; the torrent of the flood thundered and sang, and Rogaz’ blood sang too, snatching her back from the cliff-face. He flung her down across the blankets and scowled. “It is not safe!”_

_“Safer than here,” she demanded, “with my father’s lapdog bounty hunter?”_

_His smile was merciless. “I am no one’s lapdog, princess. Must I teach you this lesson?”_

_And despite herself Jama felt a shiver low and deep inside: something awakening, at the sheer primal force of the man, the captivating strength and fighter’s soul. “Teach me, then,” she retorted: choosing, choosing for herself, as a princess should._

_The mercenary grinned, drawing her near. “Princesses who refuse to listen,” he growled, “who run out into storms, should be scolded, Highness. Like a child—” And he sat upon the rock where his sword sang and purred, and pulled her down hard over his knee; his hands seemed everywhere, one holding her wrists, one cupping her backside, and she should wish to squirm free but her mind seemed hazy, yielding, caught under some spell of dominance—_

_He spanked her hard and firmly, again and again, as a princess had never been spanked before; the blows came quick and merciless through the torn gauze of her veils, and she wailed but did not struggle; she felt that strange shiver rising again, a liquid liquefying heat, a need that sizzled from her backside and along her spine and into the heart of her, and when he paused she demanded wildly, “More—”_

 

Steve stopped reading. Steve, very thoughtfully, looked at Bucky. “Oh fuck,” Bucky said, very slowly trying to put a pillow over his own head and smother himself in fluff.

“Don’t do that,” Steve said. They’d been lying in bed, tangled in late-night laziness, listening to the yip and howl of the autumn wind. “But—you want this? I mean, I know you’re good. You can write anything. Is this—would you seriously be—would you want, um—”

Bucky squirmed a little in the sheets. They bunched up: worn-thin white against tanned skin.

“Answer me,” Steve said. He was guessing, based on respective story roles; he thought he was right, based on the reaction.

“I—”

“Look at me when you do.”

Bucky’s cheeks, emerging from pillows, blushed as red as Princess Jama’s literary backside; but he met Steve’s gaze fearlessly. “Yeah. I—yeah. I think about it.”

“You think about that,” Steve repeated. Gusts darted giddily around the ancient apartment walls and windows, fascinated, alive. “That’s what you want, Buck? You want me to put you over my knee and spank you ’til you’re red-hot and sore and cryin’? Until you’re sobbing my name and promising you’ll be good, you’ll behave, you’ll be so good for me?”

Bucky squirmed a little more. His lips were parted; he made a small sound, shivery and golden.

“So you do,” Steve said.

“Please,” Bucky whispered.

“Well. Okay. Come here, then.” He’d never even thought about this before—well, not much; all right, once or twice, maybe three times, especially after that one early brilliant moment when Bucky’d knelt for him so readily—but he could figure it out, he was suddenly sure. “Tell me what you were, y’know, thinkin’. Do I…put you over my knee?”

And he thought fleetingly about his knees, then: about the skinny knobby bird’s-bones of his body, and about Bucky’s luxurious sun-kissed muscle; and he waved a hand in a gesture that started nowhere and ended up nowhere too. The wind screeched, forlorn.

Bucky licked his lips. His gaze drifted to Steve’s hand and back to Steve’s face.

Uncertainty vanished in anticipation, in rightness.

“ _I_ don’t know,” Bucky pointed out, “never done this before either, Steve.”

“No,” Steve said, “you haven’t. But you’ve wanted to. You imagined it, didn’t you, Buck? Maybe late at night, or maybe when you were writing those things, writing them all down, you wanted my hands on you?” Right up until that second he hadn’t been convinced he wouldn’t sound ridiculous saying the words—even as his cock stirred and rose at the sheer decadent pleasure of saying them to _Bucky_.

Who caught his breath, a literal gulp of air like he’d been gut-punched, pierced through by the sound of Steve’s voice. His cock—which Steve knew intimately by now, most recently including the night’s pre-story first round earlier—shot up, rapidly filling: desire and nakedness on full display.

“You really do want it,” Steve murmured, “look at that—” and Bucky flushed prettily pink and shy but his cock got even stiffer. Being on display, Steve thought, some kind of kink about the words and the—but he didn’t want to push too much, so he tested, “I like you like this,” because he’d never been afraid of jumping in.

Bucky let out a sound someplace between a whine and a groan. “Jesus Christ, Stevie—”

“Maybe I should keep you like this,” Steve said, “all the time.”

Bucky swore out loud, hand dropping to his cock and squeezing hard enough to plainly hurt. He was trembling, laid out on the bed, legs fallen open as Steve looked him over.

“What was that for,” Steve said, not really a question.

“I was—fuck, Steve, ’re you gonna make me _say_ it—okay, okay, I almost, already—and I—you didn’t say I could, Christ, I don’t _know_ , you didn’t and I—”

“Good,” Steve said, and Bucky visibly calmed, hand still loosely cupping his poor denied erection. “ ’Cause I thought you wanted me to spank you, but if you’d rather—”

“Don’t tease a guy,” Bucky said. “Kinda desperate here.”

“Not yet you’re not.”

Bucky’s eyes got bigger, at that.

Steve pondered positions for a minute, scooted up, sat down again, back up against the flat old slats of the headboard. Maybe he could tie Bucky to those slats later. “Come here.”

Bucky needed a second, but got it, and draped himself across Steve’s lap, long legs dangling, bare toes just brushing the floor. His back rippled like artwork; Steve wanted to draw him, to draw out the moment into charcoal-dust and recorded beauty, but he knew he’d remember every detail regardless. The busy scuffles of fascinated breeze. The chilly night air, mingled cold and the heat of bodies in his next inhale. The scents of sex and skin and need. The movement of Bucky’s stomach over his thighs, light and quick, with each rapid breath. The beat of his heart like thunder and love.

“Ten,” he said. “I mean, to start. This time. First time.” Bucky nodded, mute. “And I’m not gonna hurt you.”

“That—”

“I know, I know. But it ain’t about hurting you, Bucky.” He looked, steady, until Bucky looked back.

“It’s about feeling the hurt,” Steve told him, “about making you feel—but not _hurting_ you.” He thought, abruptly, of the times he _had_ hurt Bucky: the back-alley fights Bucky’d waded into solely on his behalf, the punches blocked or taken, the words Steve’d shouted at him on the one-month anniversary of that awful grief-numbed funeral, words about how _new pencils ain’t gonna bring her back, she’s dead, my ma’s dead, you can’t fix it you can’t fix me get out and leave me the hell alone—_

He’d broken one of the offerings and thrown the halves back, and Bucky hadn’t left, had only gone silently out to the kitchen and puttered around making just enough noise to remind Steve that he hadn’t; Steve’d sobbed himself to sleep with horrified angry guilty tears. He’d woken to find a blanket over his shoulders and Bucky half-dozing over a science-fiction magazine, sitting on the floor by the bed, eyes dry but red-rimmed. Bucky, Steve had recalled like a sudden surfacing from dark water, had spent years of schooldays and summers running up the stairs to the Rogers apartment; Bucky had learned to cook pot roast and potato boxty and sticky peach pie from Sarah Rogers, when Steve’d been too impatient or too sick to try.

He’d tried to look for broken pencil-pieces; he’d had some vague heart-in-throat idea of tying halves back together and sketching Bucky, sketching _for_ Bucky, please—

He’d never found any of the pieces, not then or on subsequent furtive hunts. Bucky’d woken up and yawned and said, “I wasn’t asleep, you want coffee?” and Steve had never found the right words either, missing like the disappeared pencil-fragments, even though he’d apologized profusely later. Bucky’d heard him out, said, “Don’t worry about it,” and refused Steve’s offer of paying for lemon drops or peppermints when they next went out for groceries.

Bucky, in the extremely naked present, asked, “What’re you thinking about?”

“You,” Steve said. “Pencils. I’m sorry. I can’t hurt you.” He wouldn’t. He wouldn’t let himself; he swore that as a vow, an unbreakable oath, and felt his heart crack open and bleed carnelian like unmeasured love.

“You won’t,” Bucky said. “You just said so.” He sounded utterly sincere; he sounded like he believed every syllable, like he believed in Steve.

And Steve half-wanted to cry, that same horrible heart-in-throat feeling; this made an odd combination with his arousal and his ferocious need to give Bucky everything he was asking for now, to show Bucky how far and how deep and how vastly he was loved.

Bucky stretched arms above his head, hands in tousled sheets like a metaphor: summer-tanned skin and snowdrift fabric, gold and white as a treasure, given over to Steve’s safekeeping. “How’s this? For my hands.”

“Um.” Steve bit his lip, tasted copper, shook himself. The sight and the sweetness sent sparkles down into his bones, his heart, his gut. “Yeah. Good. You—you want me to spank you. Now.”

“Not askin’ anybody _else_ to spank me,” Bucky said.

“Thanks for that,” Steve said, and meant it, as the world teetered back toward normality. “Smartass. Okay, so. Ten. Can you count?”

“I _can_ , yeah.”

“Watch your mouth.” Steve flicked fingers, let them snap against the curve of Bucky’s upturned ass. Bucky was gorgeous everyplace, of course; and Bucky yelped satisfactorily at the impact. “I want you to count. Each one.”

“I can do that,” Bucky agreed, somewhat more meekly.

“Okay,” Steve said one final time, and raised a hand.

The first crack, the first impact, resonated through the world. Steve’s hand on Bucky’s skin. Pink marks, blurrily shaped. Bucky’s moan, sinking right down and tangling up with Steve’s soul, bliss wrapped up in bliss, forever from now on impossible to untwine.

Bucky said a little dazedly, “One.”

“Good,” Steve told him, equally dazed. His hand wanted to do it again. “Good.”

Two. And three. And four. Bucky’s skin reddened; Steve wasn’t hitting too hard, couldn’t really—he didn’t have that kind of muscle-power—but he was putting his shoulder into the swings, making each one just a fraction stronger because Bucky made wonderful noises when he did, and it was less about the strength than the fact of the blows anyway, himself delivering them. Bucky squirmed on his lap, unable to stay still, and Steve’s cock noticed this in delight. Harder, then.

“Ow—” Bucky’s voice started half-annoyed and half-aroused, but broke and splintered, newly tear-streaked. “F-five…”

Steve froze. Hand in the air. Snatched out of motion. “Tell me if. If you want to tap out.”

Bucky twisted around to find him, and retorted, “Absolutely fucking not, Steve—” But he bit his lip, after; he shivered all over, barely noticeable.

“Okay,” Steve said, not moving his hand, not moving a muscle, “we’re gonna stop unless you tell me yes right now, the actual word yes, and also you tell me you’re gonna tap out if you need to.”

“Seriously,” Bucky said, but then went quiet, looking at Steve’s face.

The room changed. The wind died down, listening to the moment. Bucky’s eyes changed too. Steve didn’t know how to describe it, how to explain it: the way familiar sarcasm melted and flowed into honesty, an unexpected pure wholehearted yielding, and a kind of radiant peaceful blossoming joy in surrender.

Bucky said, almost a whisper but clear as water under crystalline skies, “Yes.”

Steve paused. Took a breath. His chest ached; he felt dizzy, tipsy, drunk on that impossible glow in Bucky’s eyes, suffused by it. He felt stronger and fiercer and powerful, giving Bucky what Bucky needed; he felt wonderfully strangely tender, because Bucky was giving him this, giving him so much to cherish.

“Yes what,” he said, because he had to speak; he couldn’t not speak, couldn’t contain the billowing emotion.

“Yes sir,” Bucky said.

Steve, who _hadn’t_ been expecting that—he’d actually been expecting Bucky to respond to the order about tapping out if needed—needed a second to wrap his head around the response, and went with, “Use my name, Buck.”

“Oh.”

“I’m not mad.” He ran a hand over the long plane of Bucky’s back, marveling at the way Bucky quivered under his touch. “I’m not mad at you. You’re doin’ great. I want you to answer me. Tell me you’ll say somethin’ if it’s too much.” He added, in case Bucky wanted to argue, “I need you to do that for me, okay? I can’t do this unless I know you’re feeling good.”

Bucky nodded, cheek resting on the sheets, eyes shut; he looked euphoric and hazy and kind of unfocused, and Steve nearly shook him; but then Bucky opened both eyes and said, “Yes, Steve, yes, I promise, I’ll say somethin’,” with an eagerness that nearly broke Steve’s heart for the infinite love and trust on luminous display.

He slid a hand to the nape of Bucky’s neck. Smoothed short curling soft strands of hair. Rested his palm over Bucky’s neck and curled fingers in, a fraction. Bucky’s breath caught; his body tensed, and his cock twitched and dribbled sticky drops against Steve’s thigh.

“Oh,” Steve observed, “you like that, don’t you, I can feel it, Buck, you gettin’ all messy and wet for me, look at you, so ready for it,” and Bucky whimpered softly and rocked his hips into Steve’s legs, drawn under by words and sensation.

“Not yet,” Steve said, “five more, and you can get yourself off, you can get off like this, on my leg, on the last one.” Bucky whimpered again, but ceased moving, acquiescent.

“Good,” Steve told him this time, and lifted the hand, and got back to it.

By eight his palm was tingling, a dark visceral thrill that leapt like a live wire to his cock. He’d been hard before, with Bucky squirming on his lap; his arousal had gone beyond that to some impossible state of granite ache, omnipresent but most heavy and hot where his cock strained upward above tight-drawn balls. Bucky’s backside burned red with handprints; Steve let his hand hover above, a feather’s-width from touching, indulging in the heat. Bucky moaned his name, a please, a plea; Bucky spread his legs wider, beyond shame now as he lay across Steve’s thighs, exposing his tight pink hole, that luscious furl of muscle. Steve considered this; got ideas.

He flattened his hand over Bucky’s ass for a second, took it away, pulled back, brought it down. Not as hard as before, but centered. Right on that exposed vulnerable opening.

Bucky went taut all over, inhale swift and sobbing like Steve’d shocked him; but then he moaned, long and liquid, and seemed to relax into the hurt, tension wholly given up, the entirety of him tremulous and enraptured. His cock was leaking constantly; Steve jiggled a thigh, rubbing against him, and earned another moan.

“That ain’t a number,” Steve said, just to check in; Bucky panted for a second and managed, “Nine, Steve…”

“Very good,” Steve praised him. “So good. You need to come, right?”

“Yes,” Bucky whispered. “Steve.”

“You can when I give you this last one. Ready?”

Bucky dug fingers into the sheets. “Ready.”

The impact, harder this time, made them both groan. Bucky’s poor abused hole fluttered and spasmed, pinker under Steve’s ministrations; Bucky shuddered from head to toe and wailed “Ten—” and came, body jerking helplessly, cock spurting wet thick heat between his stomach and Steve’s thigh, on and on.

Steve choked on a curse, some blasphemy, reverent and awestruck; he got a hand on his own cock, and kind of bent forward over Bucky and managed one or two fumbling strokes and frantic aim, and the orgasm hit with delirious electric suddenness, as he spilled himself all over Bucky’s freshly-spanked backside.

Bucky lay very limp across him, after, sobbing softly; Steve struggled with his lungs for air for a second or two, won the fight, and grabbed him and got them both lying flat on the bed. Bucky curled up immediately into Steve’s embrace; Steve rubbed his back, held him, told him he was good, he was so damn good, so gorgeous, so perfect, amazing, the best person ever, Steve’s fella, always Steve’s and Steve was so damn proud about that, that his guy was the best guy around…

Bucky woke up enough to mumble, “… _your_ fella.”

“That’s right,” Steve said, “think that’s pretty much what happens after you let me spank you and get you all filthy, covered in me,” and then petted him through renewed shivers and sighs. “Mine now, Buck.”

“Always was,” Bucky said, indistinct because he had his face buried in the crook of Steve’s neck.

“Sap,” Steve informed him, and kissed the top of his head. Bucky’s calves were just about level with Steve’s own toes; Steve hooked a leg around one. “You awake?”

“Nope.”

“Are we gonna talk about this?”

“Nope.”

“You good?”

“Yeah.” Bucky stopped hiding. His eyelashes were damp, but he was smiling. He let Steve see the smile, and then went back to being tucked into his previous spot, head down, submissive, but in a contented happy way. “You?”

“Yeah.” He nudged Bucky’s head with his chin. He was. “Not a question, though.”

“Huh?”

“You’re good,” Steve said, explaining.

“You can stop now,” Bucky muttered into his neck. “ ’M fine.”

“No, listen.” He poked Bucky in the ribs, but gently: this thing between them shimmered too new and fragile and magnificent for more. “You’re a great writer.”

“Okay, but also confused about what you think we just did,” Bucky said.

“Jerk,” Steve grumbled. It felt glorious. Him and Bucky, still the same. “You writing that. It works, Bucky. Got me thinkin’ about it, wantin’ you, in the mood. You’re good.”

Bucky lifted his head. His eyes were hopeful and shining: big and blue and tear-tracked and content, fulfilled in a way Steve’d never seen before and wanted to see again always. “Yeah?”

“Yeah,” Steve agreed firmly, and kissed him hard. “You’re good.”

 

 


	5. science fiction

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Time for the pulp science fiction, very much in the vein of early pioneers of the genre!
> 
> Also, melonbutterfly established pansexual (but wholly in love with Steve, of course) Bucky as a thing in her contribution, and it seemed like a thing that demanded a chapter with (implied) alien sex. :-)
> 
> ALSO! Now with [fabulous cover art by Guinevak here](http://imgur.com/Op9c7wM).

from an early story draft, eventually published as “Marooned on Mars!”, J.B. Barnes, _Science Fiction Stories,_ 1941:

 

_The Space Agency explorer James “Maddy” Roberts crash-landed on Mars four months and two days after launching from Earth, and knew that he would not be saved._

_The experimental drive had worked flawlessly. Mission Control had wished him luck. His sister had waved goodbye. Everything had gone smoothly, until the landing gear had failed, until he’d bounced and rolled and tumbled across the Martian landscape, rocket shedding sleek skin in long horrible strips. He was alive, though._

_That was something, he thought, as he staggered to his feet._

 

“His name’s James Madison Roberts.” Bucky’d curled himself around Steve on the bed, warmth versus winter’s cruel teeth, and was pretending to read his own book—some non-fiction breathless account of the history of flying machines and the inevitable development of flying cars and hoverboards—while in theory letting Steve read his not-yet-published story.

“James Madison…Roberts,” Steve said. “Really, Bucky? That's not even next-door to subtle.”

“Shut up, Steve.”

“Didn't say I didn't like it.”

“Shut up, Steve!”

 

_The rocket’s radio, the long-distance communication relay, had been damaged. Might be fixable with the right parts. He tinkered._

_He did an inventory. He had food and water for the projected mission length, but the Space Agency might assume his death, if he couldn’t send a message. They knew he’d crashed. They would not send a rescue._

_His mouth felt dry._

_I’m on Mars, Maddy Roberts thought, and that thought cheered him up for a while; he bent and picked up a Martian rock and felt Martian sand and grit below his boots, soft otherworldly crunching accompanying his steps. Mars everywhere, grand and martial and desolate._

_He thought he saw a silvery shimmer, a flicker of light, at the edge of his vision._

_He turned. Nothing. Perhaps it’d been a mirage, like desert tricks, like heat wavering above scorching asphalt on a summer day. He checked his suit’s vital sign readouts; he was perfectly healthy, if a bit dehydrated, but nothing serious._

_After a while he gave up on the radio._

_The colors of Mars shimmered in shades of red: ocher, cinnamon-spice, brick dust. The temperature inside his suit grew hotter, but not uncomfortable, not yet._

_Maddy Roberts watched the stars above, and thought: I am the first man on Mars. I am the first man seeing these stars, this way, on this world._

_Out of the corner of his eye he saw that golden quicksilver flicker again._

_He turned away. He pretended to tinker with the panel of his poor crippled rocket._

_The flicker came a little closer, and he turned, and leapt._

_This struggle resolved itself in moments, with them both lying on the ground, Maddy more or less on top, the alien—for it was an alien, nothing human—beneath him. It had gotten in some good kicks; his side was aching._

_“I’m not going to hurt you,” he said, “but that’s my ship,” and then he heard how foolish he sounded, assuming English or any spoken words at all would be understood._

_The alien looked back at him. He thought the head-tilt was quizzical, but he could not be sure; and in any case his breath was busy being taken away._

_The alien was—_

_Beautiful wasn’t the word. Humanoid, human-shaped if petite, six limbs that also looked pretty much human-shaped other than the two extra arms nestled just below the first. Not masculine nor feminine but somehow both, slight and lithe and androgynous without being frail, moon-pale skin and spun-sunlight hair: ethereal and a little eerie and decidedly inhuman, but glorious, yes, glorious._

 

“Their people have three sexes,” Bucky said. He was reading over Steve’s shoulder again, and this time not bothering to pretend he wasn’t. “And they like sex. In any combination.”

“It’s not just me,” Steve said, getting it. “This time.”

Bucky stopped hovering, shoved himself away without leaving the bed, fiddled with the cover of his book, said quietly, “Depends on what you—”

“I don’t mean you wrote yourself having sex with three aliens at once,” Steve clarified. “I mean you wrote yourself. You said—well, what you said. The way you love people. Anyone. It’s not about shape. You told me.”

“…yeah,” Bucky said to the book. The flying machines on the cover did not answer.

“Now you’re telling everyone,” Steve said. “I know it’s a metaphor, okay, if you write about aliens it doesn’t look like you’re writing about people, but someone else’s going to read this and they’re going to figure out that they can love aliens with six arms or different-colored skin or any shape, anything, anyone, and that’s—” Words failed him for a second. Braver than I ever knew, he thought. Brave in a way that’s not starting fights in back alleys. In a way that’s reaching out, talking, holding a hand instead of punching a bully.

“My editor wasn’t too fond of the first draft,” Bucky put into the pause. “Too…alien, I guess.” His voice, his eyes avoiding Steve’s, said more, less happily.

“The same editor who owes you money?” Steve reached over, collected a hand, played with forlorn writer’s fingers. Bucky looked up, startled out of reflection.

Steve asked, “Want me to come along next time and punch him in the nose?” And Bucky laughed, improbable and sweet as imagined waters on Mars.

 

_The alien tilted his—hers—its—head. It did not speak; it seemed to be puzzling Maddy out as he regarded it. It lay still, relaxed, beneath him, not trying to get away._

_“Right,” Maddy sighed, and got up; he had a laser pistol in his belt, but he was pretty sure his newfound companion wasn’t a threat._

_The alien seemed interested by this choice. Interested and—curious about him, he thought it was curious, he thought it was saying hello, as it got up and came over to peer at his broken rocket, and while before he’d been prepared to defend his only resources, now he was certain it meant no harm—_

_“You’re_ in my head,” _he growled, hand dropping to the pistol. “Telepathy?”_

_He got the impression of amusement, then, and a shrug. If it’d been human it would’ve said: obviously._

_Ethereal angelic Martians could be sarcastic, he thought. Who knew?_

I’m not a Martian, _it said. Words were coming more clearly now, or maybe he was understanding better, like a radio tuning in to the right frequency_. I am here to explore. Like you.

 

“They have a whole culture built around the desire to explore.”

“Did you want to _tell_ me the story, or let me finish? Read your book.”

 

My ship is functional, _the alien told him,_ but has run out of fuel. Perhaps we can trade resources.

_Mars stretched out around them: a world of possibilities, a world inhabited by two bodies, here and now._

 

“Oh, that line, I liked that line, there’s another good one coming up—”

“Bucky, go make coffee or something!”

 

_Under Martian heat, they dragged broken ships closer together; the alien’s gleamed silver, needle-slim and elegant. Maddy considered his broken banana-peel of a rocket, stole glances at alien technology. Maybe he could take pictures. Bring knowledge back. If he made it back. The alien was strong for its small size, and annoyingly competent. Plus, six arms._

You need not worry, _it said._ You may take all the knowledge you desire. We are not a selfish people.

_“Bet that makes you vulnerable.”_

Vulnerable?

_“You know, being taken advantage of. Too kind. All that.” He knew it could read his mind. He was talking out loud anyway to break the silence. Stubborn habit._

_The alien regarded him with confusion in blue-black swirling eyes. They were both wearing space suits, but their helmets were clear, and they stood face to face, very close._

There is no such thing, _it said,_ as being too kind. And you are lonely.

_Maddy Roberts, who had once been going to be married, who had gone to a funeral instead and then thrown himself into space, said, “I’m not.”_

My ship is cooler inside, _the alien said, though Maddy had the impression that this was not what it first meant to say,_ and would you like to sit down?

 

“Coffee? And, um. It’s still about us. I mean. He doesn’t have sex with three aliens. Just one. That he wants.”

“What?”

“You said—”

“I _know_ , Bucky.”

 

_The deserts and deserted canals of Mars rippled and flowed, a landscape of volcanic bones and weary tectonic forces and swirling dust. It beckoned in dry mysterious craters and plains, like a frontier, like a brand-new land, like a future instead of a past._

_Maddy and the alien sat in the alien’s spaceship, in the tiny cockpit, looking out of the viewscreen. They were helmetless now; the alien’s ship more or less matched Earth atmosphere, slightly higher oxygen content, enough to make each breath like fine wine._

I have a name, you know, _the alien said._ So you can stop calling me ‘alien.’ _It was doing the sarcastic-elf routine again, shimmery silver-gold limbs cheerfully annoyed, four arms crossed as it put boots up on the console._

 _“Yeah,” Maddy said, “but you haven’t_ told _me your name, have you,” and the alien let out a small barking sound that he knew was a laugh. It did have a functioning mouth, obviously, then._

What, you thought it was vestigial? Telepathy works best when the other person doesn’t know your language. My name is Stevenjkpahtradamor, by the way.

_“Right, okay, Steve, then.”_

_Steve snorted at him. Dust devils flirted with the idea of becoming a storm, beyond the window. The sky—_

 

“Steve’s an geologist. That’s sort of his specialty. They do actually collect rocks together. Later. And sex.”

“Buck, I swear to God, you don’t stop interrupting, I’m gonna gag you and _tie you to this bed._ ”

 

_The sky billowed with the dizzying expanse of the universe around them, making Maddy Roberts feel oddly small and oddly safe all at once, and the alien—Steve—felt solidly reassuringly present, a companion in this whole crazy long day of impossible crashes and maroonings and red rocks under his feet, and—_

 

“Hey, Steve? You wanna know what happens next?”

 


	6. letters

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Steve, in the present, reads some of Bucky's wartime letters.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I apologize for the sad bits. But they get to cuddle at the end of this chapter! It's okay!

Excerpt from a letter, written by James Barnes in response to _Harper’s Magazine_ call for submissions (1942), included in special issue published 1943 as _Why We Fight!: Letters from Our Brave Boys Overseas_

_So, this isn’t the kind of thing I normally write, but when my squad found out I was a writer, well. They threatened to come up with something on their own and send it in and slap my name on it, so. I’m writing this letter for you, guys. I know it’s supposed to be for someone back home, for an audience, maybe for America at large, but—hey, I’m the writer, right? So this is because you guys are making me try to do this. (What kinds of things do I normally write? Well, if anyone’s interested—and I’m not saying you have to be, but I said I was a writer so I ought to explain—it’s nothing big or serious, you won’t’ve heard of me. Maybe if you’ve picked up some pulp magazines or stopped by a newsstand. Crime stories, fantasy stories, science fiction, weird fiction, stuff like that. Like I said, nothing fancy.)_

_The submission guidelines said we’re supposed to talk about ourselves. Who we are, what we’re doing, what life on the front is like, for everybody back home. As far as the first: hi, I’m James, or Sergeant Barnes I guess—that still sounds kind of shiny and new. As far as the rest, well, let me tell you what we’re doing right now, which I guess should give you a pretty good idea of our day to day, out here—_

_We’ve got our camp set up for the night in a clearing in a forest, a real old-fashioned fairytale kind of forest, dark green like secrets. We’re most of the way back to the main base—had a mission which I can’t really talk about here, and we would’ve made it back tonight but everybody’s a little banged up and I didn’t want to push. Which I know deserves some eye-rolling, and I’ll hear about it if you guys ever read this, but I’m being responsible for everybody right now, so don’t start. (Also it’s selfish ’cause I wanted time to try to write. So there.)_

_We’re sitting in this forest, in the quiet shadows; we’ve got a fire going, and the crackles snap and soar, and little bits of sparks fly up like they’re running toward the stars. The night’s cold but the heat feels good; I’m sitting on a tree-branch using a book as a lap-desk—I carry a paperback or two. Sometimes if the squad behaves we have storytime. Guess it sounds funny, incongruous, but sometimes an Oz book or a cheap Western or Lewis Carroll, sometimes that fantasy feels more real than anything else, out here._

_The squad’s playing poker and talking. Someone always has cards. Right now Jim Morita, he’s from Fresno, is taking everybody to the cleaners. It’s a good way to not think about the mission and the way some of us’re limping and beat up and bruised and—missing. It’s like normality. In the forest._

_They’re playing for cookies because cookies are a valuable commodity out here, so if you’re reading this at home, could you send over some more? Cookies and socks. We never have enough of either, honestly, though I should point out they’re good in different ways. Chocolate’s nice but sometimes it melts so we particularly like gingersnaps and anything with lemon and, I’m being told, “those little tea biscuits with the almonds in.” Okay, noted._

_Seems there’s some grumbling happening about hoarding of the last gingersnap and a refusal to pay up after the last hand. Hang on, I’ve got to go be a sergeant._

_I ate the gingersnap._

_Anyway._

_I don’t want you to think this war’s about picnics in clearings and firelight and cookies. It’s not. Which is why I do want to tell you part of the story—not the mission we were on, can’t do that, but what happened after. People die in war. Good people. They die in stupid ways. And sometimes you have to play poker and laugh and think about Wonderland, because—_

_Well, what happened was, we were on the way back, and we had a lieutenant with us, a new kid, still green but brilliant, some kind of specialist in German code-breaking, and we got the objective taken care of and we made some Germans pretty mad along the way, and they set up some, well, booby-traps along our most likely escape route, which we had to take because we had a couple of injured. Real ugly traps, the kind that kill slow—like I said, I think they weren’t thrilled about what we did. We found most of them in time._

_And last night the lieutenant was doing a patrol, just a quick sweep around our spot—different spot—and, well._

_Like I said, we found most of them. Those nasty little traps._

_This one had a buried explosive. There wasn’t enough left of him to bury._

_Look, I don’t want you to think war is—_

_Let me put it another way. War is awful. That one, that’s an awful story. But I’ve told you two stories now, and maybe you can kind of see both, and where we are, what we’re doing, we’re living both. Care packages and cookies from home and maybe dry socks. And a letter that’s going home to the lieutenant’s parents once we get back and make our report._

_This war is—_

_This war, it means something. It’s a good fight we’re fighting. It’s for all the people who maybe need a little help, who’re fighting too—the people we’ve met who fight alongside us, fighting back, and if we can be part of that it means a heck of a lot. And I said so, or I tried to, and maybe it worked, because everybody got back on their feet and kept walking._

_And these guys—you guys, my squad, the ones making me write this—they’re some of the best guys I’ve ever known. Now, you might not believe me, reading this, ’cause right now two of ’em’re making monkey noises and one’s playing no tune at all on a broken harmonica (I mean you Falsworth), but these men have saved my life and each other’s lives and had each other’s backs too many times to count. They’ve been wounded and sick and shot, and they could go home, but they’re fighting. We’re fighting. Together. And I couldn’t be more proud. Except maybe about the harmonica._

_And I’m promising this right now, in this letter: you’re all coming home heroes. I can’t promise to look after you or keep you safe—I can promise to try and I will, I swear on a stack of Bibles I will, you deserve that, you deserve whatever I have to do, whatever Sergeant Barnes can do, to get you home. I said war is ugly and it is and I said we go on fighting anyway because we always do, and I want to be honest here, for you and for the readers back home: I can’t promise we’re going to make it out alive. But I can promise this._

_I swear to you you’re all coming home heroes._

 

Letter, Sergeant James Barnes to (?) Steve Rogers, undated, unfinished, unsent, half-burned; recovered from campsite (circa 1942) by International War Memorial Historical Association excavations in 1998; preserved in Smithsonian archives until 2013, delivered with Sergeant Barnes’ surviving personal effects to Captain Steven Grant Rogers, 2013

_It’s cold and I miss you._

_I wrote a whole long essay about war and heroism and patriotism and all that ’cause the guys made me, and a little ’cause I wanted to know if I still could, y’know? Haven’t written much here. Don’t feel like it somehow. Pretty far from fantasy and this ain’t a romance and I don’t know the words._

_Told ’em about the lieutenant and my speech and all. Hell, they’ll probably print that letter, and I didn’t lie, Stevie, that’s the thing, it’s all true but it’s the kind of true that slants sideways and punches you in the spine like a sniper’s bullet so you end up bleeding out._

_People don’t get that. Or maybe I don’t know what I’m talking about. You’d say so. You’d laugh at me._

_Didn’t tell them about finding a little girl’s shoe by some train tracks in the snow, just a shoe, nothing else._

_Didn’t tell them about that time we were looking at a burned-out village, a whole goddamn town, and Dum Dum said, “well, at least they didn’t freeze to death” and we laughed ’cause half of us had frostbite and the snow kept coming and it was funny but that ain’t the kind of joke you’d make back home, ain’t the kind of joke anyone should ever make, but it was that or something worse._

_~~I’m so damn tired~~ _

_I wrote about the lieutenant and the booby-trap but I didn’t write that I was there when it happened. Maybe five, ten feet away. I was coming over to ask a question, I forget what, doesn’t matter now. (No, I’m fine, stop making that face, Jesus, Steve. I won’t lie to you, I maybe got knocked out a little bit by the impact, some bruises, but I’m fine.) The squad was pretty shaken up, they liked him, he was green but he was a good man. And you know what I did?_

_I told them we’d keep fighting. I told them we’d see it through. I told them, ’cause I was the only person left to tell them, sergeant and all, that we were gonna make the lieutenant proud, make everyone proud, and come home heroes one way or another because that’s what we’re here for, not to be pretty or to survive but to fight for every goddamn inch of whatever country we’re in because this war’s about the right to try to live. Some guys had tears in their eyes. One skinny little private said “Thanks, Sarge,” like he was gonna worship me, like I hung the moon._

_Jesus fucking Christ._

_~~I’m tired and I miss you~~ _

_It’s cold and I miss you, God I miss you. Your stupid sharp fucking elbows and those skinny arms and the way you smile when you’re picking a fight. Your feet tucked under mine in the dark. You tellin’ me off for being a jerk, and bossing me around on top of that. You bathed in sunlight, covered in sunlight, with that intent quiet look you get when you’re drawing, making art like nobody’s ever seen, and I just hold my breath because it’s like watching angels sing, and I ain’t dumb enough to interrupt that gift if you let me eavesdrop a little and I’m the luckiest human son of a bitch ever, I know._

_I don’t wish you were here. You’ll hate me for that but it’s true. I gotta know you’re somewhere bathed in sunshine and keeping warm and breathing safe. I gotta know it's worth—_

_~~that you’re proud of~~ _

_~~that I’m still yours~~  _ _~~your Bucky~~   ~~yours~~_

_~~sometimes I’m not even sure I’m~~ _

_Got asked by the skinny private, his name’s Joe and he’s from Oklahoma, whether I joined up or was drafted. Told him it didn’t matter, it’s a fight worth fighting. I want to be here._

_But then I want to go home and I’m so cold all the fucking time, cold like no fire’s gonna fix, and if I could just touch your hand._

_Do you think it’s possible for a guy to want all that at once? Two things that kinda cancel each other out? You always did see right and wrong and black and white better than I could. Which is funny considering your vision but I guess you see what other people can’t, instead. (Also don’t punch me for the crack about your vision. I love your eyes, Stevie, even when your colorblind ass tells me my shirt’s brown when it’s the ugliest shade of green in the whole damn world. Actually go ahead and punch me, I miss that too.)_

_I just want to touch you. To come home and lie down in our bed, put my head in your lap, feel your hand in my hair, and shut my eyes. Sometimes I think that’d be enough. Sometimes I think if I could just get to have that one more time, lying down next to you, I could die right there, just let go, drift away. I’d be happy then I think._

_You’d sock me one for that. But you ain’t here, so I’m being honest. And if I’m doing the whole honesty routine, then—_

_God I love you._

_Know we say it, know we don’t say it—“yeah, yeah, ’course you do, love you too jerk—” you’d say, like you always say. Well, I mean it. I’m so stupid gone for you, head over heels for you, in love with you, Steve, and I ain’t fooling around or teasing, not this time. ~~I never was~~_

_I love you._

_Don’t feel like you gotta say it back. Don’t tie yourself up in knots over not wanting to say it back. I know you, Steve Rogers. Don’t. Ain’t an obligation and I don’t want you shouldering that one on my behalf. No need, I’m telling you now, so stop tryin’, okay?_

_I just wanted to say it once, straight up: I love you, Steve. Like I said, that ain’t a request and you don’t have to think anything else about it. Just had to say it once is all._

_Hell. Guess you’d better ignore this whole section. Ignore this whole damn letter._

_Hey, gotta run, Philips wants to see me—he either wants to pat me on the back for that whole stunt with the convoy and the high-powered rifle a while back (guess I didn’t tell you about that but I don’t want to think about it too much yet so you’re gonna have to wait) (don’t say it, Steve, you big fat hypocrite, take care of yourself first)—or he’s finally about to chew my ass out over the thing with the chicken in his tent last week. (In my defense I was maybe sort of drunk and he said he wanted “some real goddamn fresh rations for once” and it was good for morale, you should’ve seen the squad laughing their asses off, and nobody knew it was me, I was real quiet about it.) Or none of those, I hear we got some kind of big offensive coming up, some serious Nazi stronghold we’re supposedly going after, maybe he wants a crack-shot sniper’s opinion—_

_Talk to you later, punk—_

 

“Bucky—”

Bucky, in the year 2015, having just walked in the door of their Tower floor, bolted across the space to Steve’s side. His hair was coming loose from its bun, and he was wearing navy-blue stretchy yoga pants plus a Captain America hoodie, and his eyes got instantly worried. “Steve? What the hell’re you reading? _Don’t_ say my SHIELD instability assessment file again—”

“Not exactly.” Steve looked up, leaned against him. Bucky, standing, was taller than Steve, at least while Steve was sitting at the kitchen table; Bucky put arms around him and Steve hid his face in Bucky’s fuzzy hoodie-clad stomach for just a second and felt smaller and safer, the way his body remembered.

He breathed out, and sat back up—Bucky’s hands hovered over his shoulders, not quite landing, not quite sure—and said, “I never knew—why didn’t you ever—the way you felt about it, about the war, about me, you followed me right back in and you never said—”

Bucky narrowed eyes not at Steve but at the tidy museum-labeled box on the table. It sat completely still and tried to radiate the definition of innocuous.

Bucky picked up the top letter. Skimmed a paragraph or two. Then swore, deliberately, in three languages. “Why’d they deliver these now? Why’d you _read_ them now _,_ Steve, what the _hell_.”

Languages, Steve thought. The Winter Soldier did not speak the same way Bucky Barnes once had: he did know and deploy emotion— _who the hell is Bucky?_ would remain forever seared across Steve’s heart like a scar, like hope because that _was_ emotion—and knew how to give orders to men. He’d also learned, agonizingly well, to speak only when necessary, to eliminate extraneous words, to get a job done, to avoid any questions that might lead to certain consequences. Bucky these days had to be either very relaxed or very passionate to slip out of unthinking terrible conditioning. He’d been doing so more, lately, gradually; he was doing so now.

“They didn’t,” Steve said. “Delivered, oh, two years ago. I just—I thought maybe there’d be. Something in them. How’s Bruce?”

“Bruce says hi, and also that you’re welcome to join us for yoga if you want. I think he’s hoping for one or two more. Stark keeps refusing.” Bucky eyed the dangerous letter again. Set it down on the table. Sunshine bounced in from the kitchen window to reflect off his hand. “You know that’s not me.”

“It’s not _not_ you.” Steve wanted to say more. Wanted to say: you don’t think the yoga’s helping, I know you don’t, but you go anyway because Bruce likes the company, and oh I love you, how did you never know how much I loved you, I love you.

Bucky sighed—a very resigned and human sigh—and folded long legs up and slid down onto the kitchen floor: knees up as arm-rests, back propped against Steve’s leg, head tipped back for ease of watching Steve’s face. His hair gave up on the bun entirely and spilled dark strands over Steve’s sweatpant-clad knee.

Steve reached down, stroked stray pieces out of blue eyes, kept his hand there. Bucky tipped his head into the caress.

“This is me,” Bucky said. “I mean, so you know.”

“I know.” He did. That conditioning’d also included deference, obedience, physical positioning as lower than or subservient to the handler’s authority. Bucky Barnes had, decades before that, knelt at Steve’s feet willingly.

“Even if I recognize pieces,” Bucky said, “even if I remember writing—and I don’t, Steve, not that one. I’m sorry. But even if I did—”

“I know,” Steve said again. “And you were writing to someone who—I’m not anymore. We’re not. I just wish you’d told me. Is that dumb? Wishing that now.”

“Nah.” Bucky moved an arm, hooked a hand around Steve’s ankle: holding on. The morning—a late morning, a sleepy kind of morning, no worlds under threat beyond the kitchen walls—unfolded serenity like flower-petals, like the caress of steady fingertips over skin. “You lost someone. And you never got to process that. Not really. So. Grief, mourning. Whatever you need.”

“I have you.”

“But I’m not exactly him, and you lost the person he was, and you loved him.”

“When the fuck did you get so good at this,” Steve muttered, and swiped his free hand over his eyes, and didn’t stop petting Bucky’s hair, rubbing the small spot over a headache-prone temple, memorizing anew the feel of him.

“I talk to Sam. And my therapist. And—” Bucky paused, offered up a crooked not-grin. “Got some programming stuffed into my head. Human psychology. Predicting target reactions. ’m the world’s deadliest counselor.”

“That,” Steve said, poking him gently in the thigh with bare toes, “might actually be the scariest thing I’ve ever heard. And I’ve spent an afternoon helping Tony design training robots. I’m okay.”

“I know you are,” Bucky said. “And I’m here and you’re here and I love you.” The letters, the box, sat quietly on the tabletop, paper over wood, and became only the past: memories, not bad ones.

Steve told him, “I love you,” heart in his voice, in his eyes, he hoped.

“Yeah,” Bucky said, “I know that too,” thumb rubbing reassurance over the bones of Steve’s ankle, hand sneaking upward under the leg of Steve’s sweatpants, teasing. “Take me to bed. Fuck me until I can’t see straight. I’m very flexible, I just got done with Bruce’s advanced yoga, don’t let this stretchiness go to waste.”

“Oh fine,” Steve said, “if you insist, just remember you made it a challenge,” and got up without letting go of Bucky’s hair; Bucky shivered, eyes going dark and aroused.

“Bucky,” Steve breathed, inadvertent and amazed; Bucky considered this and got up too—still managing to keep Steve’s hands in place—and took a step forward and put both arms around him, holding Steve in their kitchen. Steve’s body ached with need and love.

After an endless while Bucky suggested hopefully, “…or you could just fuck me here in the kitchen,” and Steve laughed, and Steve kissed him, and Steve took him off to bed and took exquisite advantage, as requested, of that flexibility, because he could, because they could, together.

 


	7. memoir

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bucky's memoir's a work-in-progress.

from _The Winter and the Thaw_ , James Barnes, not-yet-published memoir, work-in-progress:

_I came back to life when Steve said my name._

_I didn’t know it then—hell, still barely do. He knew me, though. And I—_

_I knew him. I said so. I never told Steve that. He thought—he thinks—I didn’t know him. I didn’t know me. Not then. But him—it wasn’t the name. Bucky. Who was that? It was his voice. I knew that voice. Deep down someplace untouched by them and scared and reaching out a hand, I knew that voice._

_I knew him, I said, and they took that from me._

_Or they thought they did. I thought they did. My memories are still kind of jumbled up and strange, most days, but they’re coming back, and I remember thinking that they were going to take him away. My man on the bridge. Blue eyes._

_They thought they took it, but they couldn’t take Steve from me. They tried and they couldn’t. I get confused sometimes, but that one I know. Steve is maybe everything good I ever did in my life, tangled up with everything good anyway; he’s all the good I got, sometimes. And I knew him._

_And he wanted me to come back to life. All that good wanted something. From me._

_So I guess we know, since I’m writing this book, I came back, most of the way at least, these days. I came back to life because Steve Rogers said my name._

 

“Are you crying?”

“No,” Steve said, “onions,” and swiped a hand over his face.

“We don’t even have onions,” Bucky said, and kind of knelt up more on the floor and leaned over and touched Steve’s cheek as Steve sat still on the sofa, a cool metallic fingertip kiss. He’d been curled up in a lazy half-pose, having shed rigidly-trained proper obedient kneeling in favor of cuddling into Steve’s leg while distracting himself with an improbable novel that, judging from the cover, was about space pigs. Steve had let a hand dangle to stroke his hair, to rub a thumb over the back of his neck; and Bucky’d tilted his head into the caress.

Steve didn’t say _you don’t have to be on the floor_ , because Bucky knew it and Steve knew he knew. Their life was made up of choices, now: shaped to some extent by past wounds, but chosen all the same; and if they weren’t who they’d been once upon a time, they’d found the fairytale together anyway. And they _both_ liked his hands petting Bucky, anyway, he reasoned, so that was that. Decided.

“So you _are_ crying,” Bucky pointed out. “Because we don’t have onions.” The Winter Soldier’d lost quite a lot of human social skills and the tactfulness that served as everyday conversational smoothing-over, but this wasn’t that; this was just Bucky Barnes looking at him with a quiet astonished near-smile, as if forever wistfully surprised to discover that Steve would ever cry over him.

“Jerk,” Steve said, leaning into the touch, closing his eyes, feeling the whisper of metal plates along skin, opening his eyes to find pale blue-sky eyes right there looking back. “I love you so damn much it hurts, that’s all.”

“I know,” Bucky said, “I know, punk, I love you too.”

 


	8. happy endings

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And we're done! Thank you to everyone for reading along. 
> 
> And if anyone else wants to play in this universe--if you want to write the rest of the Avengers finding out about Bucky's pen names, or come up with some new pulp stories of Bucky's, or write about that time back when pre-war Steve got hired temporarily as a fill-in artist to draw interior illustrations for a magazine that was publishing one of Bucky's stories, or write about post-WS Steve and Bucky rediscovering the fun of light BDSM play and being very careful and loving with sub!Bucky--totally feel free! I mean, obviously leave intact what we've set up as 'canon' for this series, but: have fun!
> 
> Also, there is LOVELY art for this series by [sakura9842](http://sakura9842.tumblr.com/) over [here](http://luninosity.tumblr.com/post/128596043319/sakura9842-the-deserts-and-deserted-canals) and [here](http://luninosity.tumblr.com/post/127993816144/sakura9842-for-luninosity-later-much) on tumblr! :D :D

_Major Motion Picture Coming Soon! Love and Devotion Amid the Napoleonic Wars! A Battle-Scarred Hero, A Woman Who Can't Remember Her Own Name--But Together They're Betrothed! Find Out How Love Conquers All In... The Captain's Amnesiac Bride! (Rebecca Jane Buchanan, Harlequin Romance, 2015)_

 

The jet whirred, engines satisfied at the end of a successful mission, one fewer Hydra-affiliated mad-scientist-plus-miniature-cyborg-army roaming the world. Inside that jet, Steve stared at Sam Wilson and Sam’s choice of light after-mission plane-flight reading. Even the shield, propped against Steve’s foot, peered up with curious vibranium eyes.

“What,” Sam said, “so I like happy endings. This one’s pretty good.”

Steve tipped his head, meaning to joke about the romance-novel cover, meaning to joke about the terrible anachronistic pseudo-Regency cover art and the titular captain’s highly impractical uniform, meaning to joke about a lot of things; he started reading the title. “ _The Captain’s…Amnesiac…Bride_ …by…oh fuck.”

“No,” Sam protested, “it’s seriously worth reading, like, it made me get all choked up, which, granted, you know I am very in touch with my emotions, but this is a bestseller, there’s even a film deal—”

“Can I borrow this?”

 

“—by Rebecca Jane Buchanan,” Steve said, walking in the door, waving the paperback. His boots squished—the rain’d cheerfully exploded during his run from the jet’s landing pad into the Tower—but he’d kept the book dry.

Bucky shot upright on the couch—not entirely a metaphor; he had a tiny deadly pistol in one hand, though he avoided firing at the intruder—and then relaxed. “Oh.”

Steve grinned. “Were you asleep?” Bucky’s nightmares’d kept them both up four nights of the last week before he’d left. Steve’s own had taken care of two more nights. But.

But the _final_ night before he’d left, two weeks ago, Bucky had for the first time not only silently held him but had spoken words: Steve, I’m here. Tracing fingertips over Steve’s bare chest: Steve, I’m here, we’re okay. We’re somethin’, anyway. We’re okay.

“Listening,” Bucky said. “To the rain. I like rain. The sound. Did you—”

“Clean out the nest of half-sized deadly cyborgs?” Steve sat down beside him on the couch, kicking off soaked boots and peeling off most of his suit along the way. The suit was already whisking itself dry, future technology in action. Bucky had never liked rain: it stuck to freshly-pressed uniforms, drizzled over sniper’s eardrums, pounded relentlessly and made him fret over a skinny blond boy’s waterlogged lungs in Brooklyn. “Yep. You wanna tell me anything?”

“No,” Bucky said. “Or I would’ve.”

“Uh-huh.”

“It’s like a blanket,” Bucky said. “The sound. It’s…not something I need to fight. It just is. Rain.”

“Sam says you even have a film deal.”

“No, Rebecca Buchanan has nibbles around the rights from two or three producers, and no commitment yet. I’m a bestselling author, Steve.”

“I love you,” Steve said. He’d tossed the paperback onto the table. He’d read it on the jet. In one breathless sitting. “Is it—that bad? Buck—” Why didn’t you tell me, why don’t you tell me, why wouldn’t you tell me if you wake up and can’t remember anything and need to be kissed and reminded of who and where you are, every morning?

Bucky rolled eyes at him. Set the tiny pistol on the table beside the book: two pieces of himself on display just for Steve. Comfortable there. Under the hum of rain. “You ever heard of fiction, Stevie? Dramatic license?”

“You—”

“It’s that bad,” Bucky said. “Sometimes. Sometimes not. I always know you. Even when I don’t know me. I wanted to see if I could write a happy ending. I didn’t tell you because I didn’t know whether it’d be any good. Okay?”

“I’d say you know,” Steve said, heart bruised and battered and trying to mend. A happy ending, Bucky’d said. “Bestselling author, you said.”

“I was going to tell you tomorrow,” Bucky said. “The publisher moved up the release date without telling me. When we were in Bolivia. Three months ago. And we were kinda busy and then you were gone and while you were gone Fury asked me to look in on that Mole Men thing in Riverside, Iowa, because Mole Men hate Captain Kirk’s birthplace I guess, and then you came back. A day early. You didn’t read the title.”

“Mole Men—? Of course I read the title!” Steve looked at the cover again. It provided no new helpful insight. Sartorially challenged Regency-era protagonists, billowy font, a captain and his…bride…

“So I have a question for you,” Bucky said, and took a deep breath and got up: nervous in a way the Winter Soldier would never have shown, nervous in a way James Barnes would’ve turned into a joke, but here and now only open and honest and honestly displayed for Steve, as true as the book and the weaponry on the table, as spine-tingling as the drumming cadence of the storm. “Steve Rogers.”

“Oh fuck,” Steve said, or thought he said. Utter shock. How did Bucky even know about the ring, the one he’d been carrying around like a good-luck charm in a thigh pocket, the one he wasn’t sure Bucky would ever want to wear as an extra weight over a sleek metal arm, the hope that maybe someday—

“Hadn’t actually planned on doin’ this with you half-naked and wet and staring at me,” Bucky said.

“Sorry?”

“Kinda like you that way.” Bucky came closer. Steve held his breath. No way—surely Bucky wasn’t—wasn’t thinking what—no, couldn’t be, too much too soon, and in the book there’d been so many professions of love, such long thorough patient building of trust, gentle soothing of headaches, careful hands that hadn’t just dismembered a hundred cyborgs—

“Sometimes it does get bad,” Bucky said. He was favoring his right leg, Steve saw, very slightly: Mole Men, probably. Steve wanted to kiss him and shake him and yell at him about taking care of himself; Steve knew exactly how that lecture’d go because Bucky’d written that script years ago, and Steve wanted to cry and laugh and say yes to him always, always.

“Sometimes,” Bucky said, “it’s good. And I—you know my therapist says I should let myself want things. So. I wanted to write a happy ending. I want you. I mean, I _also_ wanted to propose with, y’know, the personalized copy that’s on the bed with a ring tied to it, and maybe enough advance notice to make somethin’ fancy for dinner, but—”

“Oh god yes fuck yes Bucky yes,” Steve said.

“I’m not even done, Stevie, can’t you let a guy propose, I swear, you and your damn impatient mouth—”

“I was _trying_ to say yes,” Steve pointed out. Hand fishing around in his tactical pocket, finding a shape. “I can take it back if you want, though. And also you liked my impatient mouth a hell of a lot last, what, Tuesday morning.”

“I did, I always do, and shut it anyway,” Bucky tossed back amiably, standing right in front of him, standing close enough to be tasted, the way that Steve could taste the silvery drops of rain still clinging to his own face and hair. Bucky grinned at him again, and captured Steve’s heart all over again, like every time.

“So I hear two guys can get married now,” Bucky said, and Steve laughed, because they’d both been at Stark’s celebratory victory party after that decision’d come down; and then Steve’s eyes got a little damp, because trust Bucky to make him laugh forever.

Bucky went on, “We both know about the—the sometimes, I guess. Good and bad. But I want to take whatever we can have and hold onto it, maybe, as hard as I can, and I want you, I love you, you’re my happy ending, Steve. I know I’m not a hundred percent, maybe never gonna be a hundred percent, but I’m yours, everything I got, and I’m here, I swear to you I’m here, I’m all in this with you even if we end up in Iowa fighting Mole Men, so please marry me and say I can stop talking now because I’m kinda fucking up this whole speech—”

“I already said yes, you know,” Steve interrupted a second time, and kissed him.

Thunder rattled the windows. Lightning flashed clear white-hot celebration across the sky. Bucky laughed while being kissed, laughed until Steve fumbled around and pressed a heavy slim metallic circle into the cool whirring plates of a familiar palm.

“What—”

“It’s a ring,” Steve supplied helpfully. “You know what a ring is, right, Buck?”

Bucky looked at the innocuous shining circle: lying smooth and polished and round over darker shifting multi-talented metal, a hand that could reach through fire or tear cars apart or catch Steve’s shield when needed or carry Steve’s heart like proof of life. Then he looked up.

“It’s vibranium,” Steve said. “It, um. It’ll fit. If you. Want. I love you. Bucky—I love you.”

“How long’ve you been carrying this around?” Bucky touched the ring, lightly, with his other hand: with a flesh-and-blood finger. He was wearing Captain America sweatpants, shield logo emblazoned over one thigh; his hair had been pulled back but must’ve escaped during his nap, and he stopped exploring the ring to tuck a strand behind his right ear.

“I was gonna ask you,” Steve admitted. “When I got home.”

Bucky put the ring on. It caught rainlight and lamplight and glowed. Steve swallowed. Hard.

“So,” Bucky said, “go get yours, it’s still sitting on the bed, and bring back that copy of my book, the one I personalized for you, not the cheap airport copy that you bought just to ruin my surprise, Steve, seriously.”

“Sam bought it,” Steve said, not quite moving yet—he would any second now, the ring would be there waiting, he knew, but first—“he reads romance novels, apparently,” and then he said, “That’s a yes, right?”

“Yes,” Bucky said, standing in the circle of Steve’s arms, standing with Steve in their living room, surrounded by the rustles and ripples of happy rain. “Yes.”

 


End file.
